As the use of electronic mail (“e-mail”) has become more and more pervasive, users have become inundated with an ever increasing volume of e-mail messages. In order to deal with the increased volume of e-mail messages, many users utilize e-mail client applications that support the use of e-mail handling rules. E-mail handling rules allow a user to define one or more conditions that should be tested for when an e-mail message is received. One or more corresponding actions may also be defined that are performed when e-mail messages are received that satisfy the conditions. For instance, an e-mail rule may be defined by a user that identifies incoming e-mail messages from a particular sender and moves any messages received from the sender to a particular folder for storage. As another example, an e-mail rule may be defined that identifies incoming e-mail messages that contain specific text in the subject line and then plays a particular sound when e-mail messages having matching text in the subject are received. Many other combinations of conditions and actions may be defined to handle e-mail messages in a virtually unlimited number of different ways.
Although e-mail handling rules provide a great deal of convenience for users, they are not without their drawbacks. In particular, one frustrating aspect of e-mail handling rules for users stems from the fact that it is often difficult for users to determine which of a number of rules caused a particular action, or event, to occur. For instance, an e-mail handling rule may be defined by a user that displays an on-screen message when an e-mail matching some specified conditions is received. However, when the on-screen message is displayed, there is no way for the user to identify the event, and in particular the e-mail handling rule, that caused the message to be displayed. This frustration may be compounded if the e-mail handling rule is pre-defined, as opposed to user-defined, or where the user has defined a large number of e-mail handling rules. It can be very difficult for a user to locate the cause of the event generated by the e-mail handling rule, to delete the rule, or to make changes to the rule that modify the actions that are performed when the rule conditions are satisfied.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the various embodiments of the present invention have been made.